Catholic high school students in West Brant are aiming to make a difference this Halloween with a food drive called Assumption Scares Hunger.
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Grade 12 students in the Social Justice and Equity class at Assumption College School have partnered with the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul (SSVP) to conduct a food drive to help feed families in the community.
“It’s important for us to get a first-hand perspective on these real-life issues that are affecting communities around us,” said student Tiffany Fischer.
We hear it all the time in the news that people are hungry and impoverished. To see it happen in real life and to see that we’re making an impact, I think it pushes us to do better and move forward. We want to make a difference and make a change.”
The class was able to recruit 300 students and split them into 70 groups who distributed 6,000 flyers about their food drive to households.
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Danika Parasram, a member of the organizing group, said the entire surface area of the city west of the Grand River was covered so a decision was made to extend their campaign to the villages of Mount Pleasant and Burford.
“Helping the community is big in Assumption culture,” Parasram noted.
On Oct. 30 from 4:30 to 8:00 pm each group of students will pick up canned goods from 50 to 100 houses on their route and will bring the donations to the school.
“We’re hoping to collect a lot more cans this year,” explained student Ma’ab Loffelmann. “We’ll be sorting out cans for expired or damaged items to be removed from those that will go to SSVP.”
“This is one of Assumption’s longest traditions for more than 20 years,” Fischer observed. “This is the first time we’ve seen such a big turnout of people wanting to be involved.”
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Being in Grade 12, Fischer said it’s nice to be on the operational side of the annual food drive this year and see how it has progressed from a smaller portion of the school’s population becoming involved during her earlier high school years.
“When we first started this class, Miss Torto told us that if you don’t like helping people this class is not for you,” recalled Fischer.” Everyone here wants to make an impact and change.”
Teacher Ella Torto noted that Friendship House will also be a recipient of some of the food gathered from the event, and said members of the public are able to drop off canned food donations at the school’s main office.
“We are really proud of it and we’re hoping that the community helps us out.”
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